First funerals set for victims in Brentwood slayings

Jessica Barrett, Calgary Herald04.19.2014

A shrine with flowers and other tributes, including ballet shoes with a message for victim Kaitlin Perras, is outside the house on Butler Crescent NW in Calgary Friday night April 18, 2014 where five students were killed earlier in the week.

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In the soft grey light of Good Friday morning an eerie calm sat over Butler Crescent, as neighbours, friends and strangers trickled through the quiet street in the city’s northwest in a steady procession of mourning.

Under a steely sky they placed flowers and other trinkets on three memorials, each steadily piling up on the lawn, just like the flakes of fat, wet snow. Most agreed the unseasonable weather was appropriate. It was as if Mother Nature herself had joined the city in grief.

“The sun hasn’t shone since it happened, and for good reason,” said Sherrie Rogers, a family friend of Kaiti Perras, one of the five young adults slain in the stabbing rampage earlier this week at the Brentwood home.

“All of our childhood family memories were with them,” said her daughter Jill, who grew up with Perras. “I’m very heartbroken for the whole family.”

The two embraced each other in front of the modest blue house for several minutes, taking in a scene seemingly frozen in time.

Police tape that had ringed the entire block earlier in the week had by then been confined to the property, strung around the trunks of the old, sturdy trees standing sentry around the corner lot.

It was the first day the public was able to get close to the site of what is being called Calgary’s worst mass murder. Close enough to see the details: a light left on in an upstairs bedroom; the MacDonald’s takeout littered on the lawn next to a first aid kit; a single soda cup on the hood of a jeep parked out front. All of it untouched for nearly five days now.

Joggers and dog-walkers slowed their pace along the sidewalk, sometimes stopping to wipe away tears or chat with the police officers sitting in idling cruisers. Around noon a crew of men showed up to the house to start the grim task of cleaning up.

“It’s very sad to see what’s happened here,” said Phil Langford, a Dalhousie resident who came by with a small brown teddy bear to offer.

“I hope, for the parents, they can give them an answer of what the motive was and get some closure that way,” he said, recalling the heartbreaking statement Thursday by Doug de Grood. The father of the 22-year-old suspect and a long-serving Calgary police offer had declared unconditional love for his son even as he and his wife Susan were anguished by the unknowns.

Their son, Matthew de Grood. is charged with five counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of 23-year-old Perras, Jordan Segura, 22; Zackariah Rathwell, 21; as well as 23-year-old Josh Hunter and 27-year-old Lawrence Hong.

With the motive for the killings still a mystery and the details likely only to come out in court, attention next week will turn to the families of the victims as they lay their children to rest. Three of the funerals are scheduled for Monday.

Segura’s will be first, held at McInnes & Holloway Chapel of the Bells on Centre Street North at 10 a.m. It will be a particularly tough service for staff at the funeral home where he was a cherished employee.

“We do this every day, but it’s not our story,” said one of his co-workers who dropped by the house Friday with a bouquet of pink orchids and a handwritten note.

“I know that when we go to work this week it’s going to be public and we’ve got to buck up and be professional people,” said the woman, who asked not to be named. “I just needed a personal moment.”

A ceremony for Perras, meanwhile, will be held at 1 p.m. at First Alliance Church, 12345 40 St. S.E. A scholarship has also been set up in memory of the accomplished ballerina who studied for years at Counterpoint Dance Academy in Marda Loop. The family has asked that donations be made in lieu of flowers to the Kaiti Perras Love of Dance Scholarship Fund at any TD branch or by email money transfer to kaitiperrasloveofdance@gmail.com.

Hunter, drummer of the popular local band Zackariah and the Prophets, will also be laid to rest Monday at 2 p.m. at Christ Church, 3602 8 St. S.W.

For those who will no doubt continue to pay respects to the victims at Butler Crescent over the weekend, one visitor, the mother of two university-aged children, endeavoured to make the site a little more comforting with her contribution.

“I was thinking of those kids coming here at night in the dark and the snow,” she said, driving a row of solar lanterns into the ground. “I just thought they could use a little light.”

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